Ornate Ordos wedding draws DC crowds

The upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year, which arrives on Friday, is a busy season for wedding ceremonies. On Friday and Saturday evening, a Washington, DC, audience of some 2,000 people observed probably the grandest wedding ceremony they had ever seen.

The Wedding of Ordos, staged by the Ordos Song and Dance Theater from China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, recreated a long and rich wedding tradition from the hometown of Genghis Khan.

The musical drama tells the story of a young man and woman's first encounter, their growing mutual attraction, their presentation to each other's family and finally the solemn wedding ceremony and their subsequent life on the great prairie of Ordos.